


The King of Bad Ideas

by acewillgraham (ConsultingTimeLord)



Category: Geek & Sundry, Sagas of Sundry, Sagas of Sundry: Dread
Genre: Angst, M/M, Post-Finale, Some Fluff
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-11
Updated: 2017-08-27
Packaged: 2018-12-14 05:33:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,793
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11776530
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ConsultingTimeLord/pseuds/acewillgraham
Summary: Regret has calcified Kayden's heart, leaving him walking through life with his head in the past. He can only think of Tanner and what could have been. After lingering for months on old memories that only hurt him, he comes up with an extremely bad idea. A way to right some of his wrongs.





	1. Chapter 1

They lived. They survived. But not all of them. Not Tanner. Weeks passed with little sleep and Kayden suffered for it, but every time he closed his eyes he saw Tanner being ripped apart. He knew the rest of his friends suffered too, Sat especially, but the dead weight of hard, black guilt in his stomach crushed him every second of every day. When he saw Sat, or Darby and Reina, his stoic resolve bubbled to the surface, becoming stone in the face of emotion to be a stable force for their sakes. But alone, he crumbled.

In the darkness of his shared apartment with Sat, a bottle of whiskey in hand, he succumbed to his thoughts. If he had only stepped in, taken on the burden Tanner resigned himself to.  If only he had died instead. He upended the bottle into his mouth, swallowing enough whiskey to sear his tongue and the walls of his throat. After a few more mouthfuls, the solid rock of guilt dissolved away, causing his thoughts to swirl and his vision to spin. Like most nights when he managed to get a few hours of sleep, Kayden drank until he passed out on the couch and fell into a dreamless haze.

“Kayden, what the fuck?”

Sat’s voice started him awake as she slammed the front door and turned on the lights.

“Sat, what the fuck?” Kayden mumbled into the stiff, floral pillow propped up against the couch’s arm.

“You have a bed, you know. Have you been drinking again?”

Tiny fists inside Kayden’s head slammed against the walls of his skull as he opened his eyes in small increments. “What’s the point of having Jack Daniels if we don’t drink it?”

A heavy sigh left Sat’s lungs, leaving unsaid words hanging in the air. As Kayden’s vision cleared, blinking away sleep and the blinding light, he saw Sat kneeling in front of him, holding a glass of water out to him. He grabbed it and sat up, draining the glass in a few gulps as she picked up the bottle of Jack and stored it away in the kitchen.

“Sorry, Sat,” he said.

“What was that?” Sat said, looking over her shoulder from the kitchen sink.

“I said I’m going to my room.”

Kayden dragged himself off the couch and over to one of the two doors behind it, the one with the door frame splintered at the hinges.

As he wrenched the door open, Sat responded, “Get some sleep, bud.”

“Yeah. I’ll sleep when I’m dead,” he mumbled under his breath as he stepped in the dark, windowless room and shut the door behind him.

The small, narrow room contained a few towers of storage boxes, some exposed, dripping pipes, and a bare twin mattress pushed up against the wall. The landlord didn’t know he existed, but he helped pay rent with his shitty video store job, so he imagined that’s why Sat kept him around. Kayden flopped down onto the mattress and stared up at the water-stained ceiling.

Sleep evaded him all night, leaving him with his sober thoughts. He tried sneaking out for the whiskey again, but a metal padlock held the cabinet closed. A sticky note on the lock read: If you wanna drink, let’s drink together ok? Kayden gritted his teeth and curled his hands into fists, shaking for a moment before closing his eyes and inhaling a deep breath. The muscles in his body fell lax and he returned to his room without a sound.

While laying, listening to Sat muttering in her sleep through the wall, he thought back to high school, how things used to be before the camping trip. He didn’t romanticize those days or see them in a new light, but he never woke up screaming. He hadn’t killed a man or watched someone die. Everyone was alive and together. Not that it would matter if he was still alive.  Kayden knew he couldn’t stop being an asshole long enough to show any real emotion. Tanner would still have a vendetta against him and he would go out of his way to provoke and encourage that rage in Tanner. A catalyst for chaos.

It wasn’t always that way. Kayden met Sat in freshman year of high school, behind the building during homeroom. He skipped first day, avoiding academic responsibility in favor of the cool fall air and a cheap menthol cigarette. As he inhaled a lungful of smoke, a girl with blood red hair and a septum piercing fell to the grass on her butt next to him. He looked at her, then up to the open third floor window above them, before holding out his cigarette to her.

“Hey, thanks,” she said with a wry smile before she took a drag off it and handed it back. Smoke billowed out of her mouth as she coughed. “I’m Sat.”

“Kayden.” He held out his hand and helped her to her feet.

They stood in silence until the first period bell rang, a bond formed. The next day, she introduced him to her nerd friend and Kayden regarded him with a critical eye, unimpressed. She led him over at lunch, a ginger boy with huge glasses, clutching a paper bag to his chest.

“Who’s the dweeb?” Kayden said as he eyed him over. The boy clutched the bag tighter, shrinking into himself.

“Be nice,” Sat chastised with a glare. “This is Tanner. He’s my best friend.”

“Hm.” Kayden looked from Sat’s stern expression to Tanner’s wide eyes, then held out his hand. “I’m Kayden.”

“Oh!” Tanner stared at him, his eyes widening, but grabbed and shook his hand. “Hi. Um, nice to meet you, I mean.”

“Mhm. Come on, let’s find a spot outside,” he said, pushing past Tanner toward the cafeteria exit.

“I thought only seniors could eat outside,” Tanner said, the strength of his voice tapering off at the end as Kayden turned to look at him.

Kayden shrugged. “So? Grow a spine and pretend you’re a senior. If we sit by ourselves and don’t act weird, we’ll be fine.”

“Yeah, right, okay,” Tanner said, sounding resigned.

The sun blinded Kayden for a moment as they stepped out of the front doors to the front lawn. Picnic tables were set up on both sides of the paved walkway, all swarmed by the senior class. No one gave them a second glance as they walked over to a grassy spot on the side of the building and sat down in a circle. Sat pulled a plastic wrapped sandwich from her backpack and, seeing her take a bite, Tanner visibly relaxed and opened his paper lunch bag. He pulled out his own sandwich along with an apple and a red Jello cup. Kayden punched Tanner’s arm hard enough to make him drop the apple on the ground, rolling until it stopped at Sat’s legs.

“What, did your mom pack your lunch?”

A red flush colored Tanner’s cheeks. “Um, yeah.” Sat threw the apple back at him and he caught it with ease.

Kayden raised an eyebrow and smirked at him.

“What about you? What are you eating?”

The question threw Kayden off, but he just shrugged. “Not hungry.”

But that lie burned on his tongue. He had no money, his mother left him, and there wasn’t enough food in the fridge for lunches. The money from his after-school job only stretched so far. A light, burning blush rushed to his cheeks as he stared down at his battered combat boots. After a moment, a pale hand holding half of a turkey and cheese sandwich pushed itself into view. Kayden stared at it, then looked at Tanner’s wide-eyed expression, and his hands started to shake. Without thinking, he smacked Tanner’s hand away, knocking the sandwich onto the grass.

“I said I wasn’t hungry!”

“You didn’t have to ruin perfectly good food,” Tanner snapped, his whole face turning red.

“Yeah, Kayden, what the fuck?” Sat said, staring at him with a furrowed brow.

Kayden frowned and relaxed his shaking hands. “Sorry,” he mumbled, refusing to look at either of them.

The day after, Kayden scrounged up a few dollars from his room to buy Tanner lunch. He dropped the tray of food on the table in front of him, mid conversation with Sat, and walked away before he could respond. He knew he was an asshole, but apologizing for his actions felt like tearing off skin, so he perfected the art of apologizing like an asshole.

That scenario happened often over the years, even as Kayden stole Sat’s time and attention from Tanner. The nerd tried to be nice and Kayden couldn’t accept it. Every year on his birthday, Tanner bought him a thoughtful gift and every year Kayden told him to shove it. There were better ways to spend his money. On Tanner’s birthday, Kayden showed up, no gift, no apology, because he had no money to afford one. Only one memory raised to the surface where Kayden was honest and vulnerable with Tanner, and he didn’t know if Tanner ever remembered it.

The group, all five of them, rented a limo to attend prom. Kayden couldn’t afford his share, but Sat chipped in to help him out, though she kept it between the two of them. None of them had dates, so they all decided to go with each other, even though several men had asked the girls to prom. Raina and Darby were too busy eye-fucking each other when they thought the other wasn’t looking while Sat didn’t deem any man worthy of her. Twice, Kayden saw Tanner try to work up the courage and ask Sat himself, but he didn’t have the balls to do it. Going all together was the next best thing.

As everyone worried about what to wear, Kayden lounged on Sat’s bed in a black t-shirt and jeans with his green military jacket. She tried on two different dress options multiple times, asking Kayden for his opinion, and he gave his honest answer that they both looked great. She’d look great in anything. After an hour, he rummaged through her beauty products and started painting his nails black while she debated with herself. Eventually she settled on the black off the shoulder dress with a lace back. She held out her hand to him to lead him out to wait for the limo and he could see why people fell in love with her.

The limo arrived to pick them up last. Tanner wore a ridiculous light blue suit that didn’t look too bad with his ridiculous red hair. Darby wore a tux with a red bowtie and Raina wore a complimentary red dress. He wished they’d just kiss and get it over with.

“Tonight should be fun, don’t you think?” Tanner said, adjusting his tie.

“If it’s like any other school dance, I’m sure it’ll suck pretty hard,” Kayden scoffed.

“But we’ll still have a good time,” Sat said, punching Kayden’s shoulder with a spikey garnet ring.

“Why do you have to be such a downer all the time?” Tanner said with a pointed glare.

Kayden shrugged. “It’ll be a blast, blah blah.”

“Did you bring the good stuff, Kay?” Sat asked, leaning her head on his shoulder.

“You thought I would come to this dance without anything to spike the punch bowl?” he said, pulling a silver flask from the inner pocket of his jacket.

He unscrewed the top and sipped from it—straight gin from his father’s stash—before passing it on to Sat. Darby and Raina drank from it, though a little more hesitantly, before passing it down to Tanner. With narrowed eyes, Tanner sniffed the contents and flinched away.

“Come on, Tanner,” Kayden said, prodding him in the side. “One drink.”

Tanner rolled his eyes and stared down at the flask for a moment, then he tipped it back into his mouth, swallowing more than just a sip. A cheer from the other four filled the limo as Tanner shivered and cringed. He thrust the flask at Kayden who stuffed it back into his pocket.

They arrived late to the school, piling out of the limo into the full parking lot where the pavement vibrated from the music. The flashing lights and the silhouettes of people dancing in the windows drained all the will and energy from Kayden, but Sat slipping her arm around his and smiling at him in her bright, infectious way kept him going. As Sat led them on, Tanner fell into step beside them, giving them a hard side-eye, to which Kayden turned and responded with a wink before interlocking arms with him too. The three of them walked through the door together, with Raina and Darby directly behind them, but as soon as the first few people turned to stare at them, Tanner pulled away and distanced himself.

The prom turned out to be everything Kayden expected. Boring with bad dancing, shit music, and too many people. He danced a few times on Sat’s request as she pulled him out onto the floor, but she spent most of the evening having fun with Raina and Darby while he felt content to sit on the bleachers. Rather than waste good gin by pouring it in the punch, he kept it with him, stealing a sip when the chaperones weren’t looking.

“Well, you were right. This dance sucks,” Tanner said, plopping down next to him.

“It’s only lame cause you’re making it that way,” Kayden said, leaning back against the wooden bleacher behind him. “You wanna have fun? Go dance with the girls. They’d be happy to have you. God knows they keep trying to get me over there.”

Kayden pointed out toward a corner of the dance floor where Sat, Raina, and Darby all danced around each other, smiles on their faces.

A frown lined Tanner’s face and he sighed, holding out his hand. “Pass me the flask.”

“That’s definitely a bad idea. But, to be fair, I’m all about bad ideas,” Kayden said as he pulled the flask from his jacket and held it out, but before he let Tanner grab it, he pulled Tanner in close with his other hand. “If anyone catches you with it, you didn’t get it from me.”

“Don’t worry, I won’t say anything.” He unscrewed the top and drank at least a mouthful before he recoiled from the taste.

Kayden eyed him, his sad expression and his slumped shoulders. “You know, if it’s just Sat you wanted to dance with, you—”

“—It’s not—”

“—Cause I could—”

“STOP!”

Every muscle in Tanner’s body tensed up, his hands shaking, and Kayden backed off, holding up his own hands in surrender. Rather than try to talk to him, Kayden kept a close eye on Tanner as he polished off the gin in under ten minutes. Inside Tanner sat a bomb waiting to explode. A couple of minutes passed until Tanner froze for a moment, then leaned back and stared up at the ceiling.

“Whoa,” he said, blinking a few times.

“That hit you quicker than I thought. Have you eaten today?” Kayden said as he grabbed the empty flask from Tanner’s lax hands.

“Just the toast from breakfast.” Tanner swayed a little as he stared at the sparkling stars hanging and twirling in the air.

“Jesus, Tanner,” Kayden said as he rubbed his eyes. “I’m the king of bad ideas. Listen, you sit here, I’m going to go get some food from the snack table.”

Tanner nodded, his attention still hyper focused above him, as Kayden stood up and maneuvered his way over to the crowded table. With some light elbowing on his part, Kayden made it across the table with a full plate of chips and chocolates and fruit, anything he could grab before he turned back to the bleachers. As he walked closer, however, he realized that Tanner wasn’t sitting there anymore. Kayden clenched his teeth as he set the plate down in his spot and turned to scan over the crowd.

It didn’t require much effort to find a giant ginger in a powder blue suit, but he had stumbled his way into the middle of the crowd, crashing into people in his clumsy state. Kayden hurried after him, pushing his way toward him, when he witnessed Tanner knock over a guy half a foot shorter than him as he tried to make it to the other side of the room. The guy stood up with help from a few of the people around him, and he set his glare on an oblivious Tanner.

“What the fuck is wrong with you, freak?” the boy said, pushing Tanner and making him stumble.

Kayden caught up to them and grabbed Tanner by his jacket to keep him from falling over. “It was an accident, asshole. Leave him alone.”

The boy looked him up and down and scoffed. “What are you gonna do?”

The fire in his gut engulfed his whole body, causing his hands to shake. He stepped forward and grabbed the kid by the front of his shirt, dragging him close so he could talk to him in a way no one else would hear. “I am one serious infraction away from going to juvie or jail and if you think I wouldn’t do it to protect that nerd behind me, you’re dead fucking wrong. So back off.”

Kayden let the boy go and grabbed Tanner by the jacket, leading him back to the bleachers and sitting him down.

“Kayden, what are you doing?” Tanner said, slurring his words.

“You’re in no state to be doing anything but sitting and eating,” Kayden said as he shoved the plate of food into Tanner’s hands.

Tanner’s expression soured as he looked down at the food. “Why are you always in my way, making things worse for me…?”

“I’m in your way? You’re in your own way,” Kayden said, poking him in the shoulder as he sat down beside him. “You wanna do something, then do it. But doing it when you’re drunk never ends well.”

“All I’ve ever been is nice to you and you can’t help but be a huge fucking jerk,” Tanner said, staring at Kayden with narrowed eyes and a furrowed brow.

Anger rushed straight to Kayden’s head, fogging his thoughts with smoke as he opened his mouth, but he paused, biting his tongue. A deep breath. “You… are right. I’m a compulsive asshole and you never deserved that,” he said as Tanner stared at him with wide eyes. “Now shut up and eat your food.”

Tanner’s eyes turned watery as he picked up a potato chip and stuffed it into his mouth.

“You’re a nerd, but I’ve always liked you from the first day I met you. And I think your photography is incredible. I say this freely because you’re wasted and you probably won’t remember.” Kayden spoke to his boots instead of looking at Tanner.

Silence in the air between them grew tense and Kayden closed his eyes. He didn’t talk about his feelings often, but when he did, the immediate consequences never turned out well. A few moments passed as Kayden worried enough to fill an hour, then he felt a weight drop onto his shoulder. He looked over to see Tanner resting his head on him, eating a chocolate covered strawberry in small bites. With a small smile, Kayden reached up and pat the side of Tanner’s face, leaning his head on top of his ginger mane.

“You’re a cute, unruly drunk,” Kayden said. “I like this side of you.”

“I like this side of _you_.”

Something soft pressed against Kayden’s cheek, but when he turned to look, he found himself inches from Tanner’s face, close enough for their noses to brush. Neither one of them moved until Tanner closed the distance between them, turning his head as he kissed him. Instinctively, Kayden tensed up, not kissing back or pulling away while Tanner grabbed the sides of Kayden’s face and kissed him with fervor. Tanner stopped and pulled away, staring at Kayden, then he dropped his hands.

“Sorry, I… I just. I don’t know what I was thinking,” Tanner said as his face turned bright red.

Kayden’s heart pounded in his chest and blood rushed in his ears, drowning out the music. “Wait,” he said, reaching out to the cup the side of Tanner’s face in one hand. “You just took me by surprise.”

He pulled Tanner back in and kissed him, running a hand through his soft hair. After a moment of hesitation, Tanner kissed him back, harder, hungrier, and Kayden could taste the chocolate and gin on his tongue. Kayden dragged Tanner onto his lap, moving from Tanner’s lips to his neck, when a shrill voice broke his attention.

“Hey, you two, break it up! There will be none of that here.” A woman in a grey pantsuit charged over from the back wall, fire and hell in her eyes. Kayden knew her well as the vice principal. Tanner scurried off his lap, but Kayden just flashed her a wry smile.

“No harm done, Mrs. Williams. It was just a kiss.”

“It looked like a lot more than that. And with… Tanner?” she said, looked over at Tanner as he tried to cover his face. She turned back to Kayden, who shrugged and threw an arm around Tanner’s shoulders. “Well, I better not see anything like that again or you’ll both be thrown out.”

Kayden saluted her as she hurried away to patrol the dance floor. Tanner didn’t speak to him for the rest of the night, instead staring at his hands, lost in hazy thought. Still, Kayden helped him walk to the limo at the end of the night and let him sleep on his shoulder on the ride home.

Since then, he kept that night close to his heart, but could never find the courage to bring it up, not after the way Tanner reacted to being caught. Instead, he fell back into his old habit of treating Tanner like shit, ruining his own chances of reconciling the events of that night. And after a full year of not saying a word to each other, his chance died forever. The thought squeezed his heart in a tight fist. Only memories lingered, and even those would fade in time. He replayed them over and over until a knock on his bedroom door startled him.

“Kay, it’s eight in the morning. You’re gonna be late for work.”


	2. Chapter 2

Work crawled by, hours dragging on like days. Few people entered the shop as far as he could remember, though his mind wandered for most of the eight hours. The teen replacing him showed up after five pm, allowing him to finally head back home. As he approached the apartment door, he heard multiple voices on the other side. He unlocked the door with the duplicate key he made and opened it to find Raina and Darby sitting on the ratty, brown couch and Sat cooking in the kitchen.

“Hey,” he said, glancing between the three of them.

“Kayden! It’s been a while,” Darby said, raising a tumbler glass of whiskey to him.

“Yeah. Too long,” he said, shutting the door and dropping his keys on the nearby end table.

“Do you want a drink?” Raina offered, preparing to stand up, but Kayden waved away her offer.

“I can get it. I just need a second.”

He walked over to the kitchen area, stopping next to Sat as she stirred a pot of sauce. “I could’ve used a little warning if we were having company,” he said, talking in a hushed voice.

Sat turned to him, her perfectly sculpted eyebrows raised.

“Okay, yes, it’s primarily your apartment, but I do pay rent.”

“I did this for you, Kay. You’ve been so down. I thought maybe having more friends around would be good for you,” Sat said, turning to him with on hand on her hip. Her mouth turned into a frown, her brows knitting together.

Kayden sighed. “It’s a nice gesture but…”

“But?”

“They’re just reminders,” Kayden said, avoiding eye contact.

“What’s going on with you? Please, can you just talk to me?”

“Not now, with everyone here. Maybe later,” he said, turning back toward the living area. He flashed a smile at Raina and Darby, pointing to his bedroom door. “Just gonna get changed and I’ll be right out.”

A moment of reprieve behind his bedroom door as he peeled off his jacket and his uniform shirt, pulling on an old band t-shirt instead. The mattress on the floor called to him, but he didn’t want his friends to worry about him or wonder what was wrong. After gathering himself together to form the shape of an unbroken Kayden, he walked out and poured himself a shot of whiskey before helping Sat with dinner. They made a pasta dinner with garlic bread, plus the bottle of cabernet Darby and Raina brought with them.

They sat and ate and talked around the coffee table, drinking a little more than just socially to diffuse the tension lingering between them. Raina and Darby wound up drinking too much to drive home, so Sat offered them her bed, opting for the couch. After the whole bottle of wine and two thirds of the whiskey disappeared, Kaden found himself alone with Sat on the couch.

“You can have my bed if you want. I honestly don’t mind sleeping on the couch,” Kayden said, rubbing the back of his neck.

“I’m fine on the couch,” Sat said, curling up with one of the throw pillows. “I was hoping we could talk, Kay.”

“About what? I’m not any different than I have been,” Kayden said, sitting cross legged on the couch’s other end.

“You’ve been getting worse and you know it. I think you need to talk to someone. Someone who can help.”

“You know I can’t do that. You know better than anyone. They’d lock us up if we talked about the shit we’ve seen.”

“You can just talk about how you feel, Kay. It doesn’t have to be exactly what happened,” she said, but her conviction shrank and she looked down at her hands.

“It’s not that easy. Everything is too… connected. Anyway, I’m not the only one having a hard time here,” Kayden said, staring over at the small TV, ten feet in front of the couch.

“I’m around everyone the most and I can tell you’re still taking it the hardest,” Sat said, resting a hand on Kayden’s arm. “I know you loved him, but you were right. He’s not coming back. We have to move on. Maybe we could try going back to college? Raina and Darby seem to be doing better now that they’re back. It might be easier if we do it together.”

“Yeah… maybe. I’m gonna go to bed,” Kayden said, moving to stand up, but Sat tightened her grip on his arm, keeping him in place.

“Hey, I’m just taking shots in the dark here. I don’t know what’s wrong unless you tell me, but if you don’t wanna tell me, please tell someone.”

“I get it, okay. You care about me,” Kayden said, rolling his eyes, but he couldn’t suppress a small smile.

“You should spend the night out here with me. We can watch a movie or something.” Sat said, giving an exaggerated pout with wide eyes.

“If you insist,” Kayden said with a sigh.

He settled onto the couch, laying down while Sat rummaged around for a movie. After ten minutes of searching, she popped in a VHS tape before laying on the couch between Kayden’s legs, her head on his chest. Kayden closed his eyes and wrapped his arms around her, half listening to the movie and half focusing on Sat’s level breathing. From what he could gather on audio alone, a B-rated horror flick played, something about ghosts and hauntings. Every time something scary happened, he felt Sat’s muscles tense, and he hugged her tighter. But he only caught bits and pieces as he fell in and out of consciousness.

Toward the end of the movie, when the characters were attempting some sort of exorcism, Kayden fell asleep for the first time in a while without being blackout drunk. The darkness behind his eyelids formed into a dream about himself and Sat and an angry ghost haunting them relentlessly. The ghost trashed their apartment, tossing their furniture and breaking their dishes. It threw knives and broken glass at him and he could feel its intention to kill him, but he hunkered down behind the fallen couch so the cushions could absorb the blows. He braced himself against the underside of the couch until a sharp pain tore through his back, near his right shoulder blade. With some effort, he wrenched his body away, seeing a bloodied arrow poking through the black lining.

Kayden’s heart pounded and his stomach twisted in knots as he looked over the top of the couch to see a cloud of mist form into a body. It clumped together, shaping into a tall person, then it sculpted the details, and the shifting, grey mass turned into Tanner. He held a bow and arrow, string pulled back to his cheek, and aimed at Kayden.

“Tanner?” Kayden croaked, his heart rising into his throat.

To his right, Kayden saw Sat peek over the top of the upturned coffee table, her eyes wide. She shouted something at Kayden, but he couldn’t make out any words. It sounded like she was screaming underwater, distant and muffled. Every muscle in his body froze as he stared at Tanner and Tanner looked back with hard, unwavering eyes and clenched teeth. He could only stand and watch as Tanner closed one eye and lined up his shot before loosing the arrow. It flew in slow motion, straight and true, striking Kayden through his heart. He staggered back as Tanner lowered the bow, not breaking eye contact with him. Tanner’s expression softened as Kayden dropped to his knees, too weak to stand. Screams tore through his dampened hearing, ringing in his ear.

“Kayden! Kayden!” Sat said as he felt his body being shaken. “Wake up!”

A jolt ran through his body, charging his nerves and raising the hairs on his arms, as he opened his eyes. Sat stood over him, gripping the front of his shirt in one hand and cupping the back of his head in her other.

“Are you okay?” she said, sitting down on the coffee table as he shifted himself into a sitting position.

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m all right. Just a bad dream,” he said, wiping the sweat off his forehead.

“You were thrashing around a lot, then you got very still. And I think…” She bit her lip and shook her head. “Well, it was just a dream.”

“You think what?” Kayden said with a frown.

She hesitated, staring him in the eye before averting her gaze. “I think you said his name,” she said in a hushed voice.

A chill ran through Kayden’s veins and his stomach lurched. “You probably misheard. I was just having a nightmare about shapeless ghosts haunting us. Probably from listening to that movie.”

“Are you guys okay out here?” Darby said, sticking her head out of Sat’s bedroom door.

“Fine,” he said waving his hand at her. “Just a nightmare. Go back to sleep.”

“He’s fine,” Sat said, running a hand through his dampened hair.

Darby closed the door and he heard her footsteps as she walked back to the bed. Left alone again, Sat adopted a concerned expression.

“I’ll make some coffee, I guess. No more horror movies for you for a while,” she said as she stood and walked to the kitchen.

The hatred etched into Tanner’s face lingered in Kayden’s thoughts as he sat there on his own. It felt real in the moment, the fear, the anger, the arrow tearing through his heart. Did Tanner still hate him, even in death? The idea of it squeezed his chest and restricted his breathing. He gasped for air and didn’t even notice Sat return with two mugs of coffee.

“Hey, Kayden, you don’t look good. Are you sure you’re okay?” she said, setting the mugs on the table before sitting down next to him.

“I lied. About my dream. He was in it,” Kayden said, trying to contain the anxiety constricting his ribcage and all the organs within it.

“I had a feeling,” she said as she reached up to touch his face, but he intercepted her hand and held it in his.

“He was a ghost terrorizing us, but he didn’t show himself until the end. And he shot me with a bow and arrow. And there was so much anger in his eyes,” he said, intertwining his fingers with hers, his attention on their hands. “I think I deserved it.”

“No,” she said, gripping his hand. “Kayden, no. You don’t deserve anything like that.”

“He did hate me, though. Do you think he still does?”

“He didn’t hate you. Well… I guess I can’t say what he felt in the year after that camping trip, but before that. Sure, he felt frustrated with you at times. You’re not the easiest person to talk to, you know. But he loved you, just like I love you. Just like Darby and Raina love you,” she said, grabbing his chin and forcing him to look at her.

“Thanks, Sat,” he said, showing a weak smile. He just wished he could believe her.

She pulled him into a hug and kissed the top of his head for a minute or two before letting him go. The coffee cooled off some in that time, allowing Kayden to pick it up and drain the mug in a few gulps.

“I think I’m gonna go to my room and just rest my eyes for a bit,” he said, standing up and walking away before Sat could try to comfort him again.

He wrenched the door open and closed it, attempting to be quiet and gentle as he forced it shut. Darkness enveloped him for a moment before he started reaching around for the small metal chain above him that turned the exposed bulb on. After some groping, he tugged on it, and started searching through the stacked boxes in the ill yellow light. They contained his and Sat’s clothes, some belongings they carried from home that wouldn’t fit in the apartment. A record player and a small record collection, old sketch books, some dishes and cookware they didn’t use often. Buried at the bottom of one of his clothes boxes, he found a powder blue tux jacket with a pair of broken glasses tucked into the breast pocket.

The glasses weren’t the ones he was wearing when he… No. They were old ones, from high school. He held the pieces in his hands, split down the bridge with a cracked right lens. The glasses, he’d kept for a while now, as a reminder of the day they broke. Tanner’s first fist fight. A tall Neanderthal of a man squared up to Tanner because he refused to get out of his way. For a moment, Kayden thought he would have to step in right away, but Tanner swung a solid right hook that made the bully stagger back a few feet. The next hit from the bully broke Tanner’s glasses and knocked him out cold on the ground. That didn’t make Kayden any less proud as he finished the job for him, knocking the jerk on his ass and earning a week’s detention for it. With the jacket, however, he stole that from a wake he wasn’t invited to.

After they returned, one person short, they told the police and Tanner’s parents that he wasn’t coming home. Devastated felt like too soft of a word to describe Tanner’s mother’s reaction. She sobbed and screamed and denounced all four of them as Tanner’s friends calling them bad influences, that they were the reason he died, and she wasn’t wrong. She barred them from his wake and his funeral, but Kayden had never been one to follow rules.

Through word of mouth, he discovered the date and showed up at their home while everyone was inside, milling around, eating food, paying respects and condolences. He recognized a few faces from school, but none that knew Tanner, not the way he and his friends did. Once he found an opening where no one was looking out of the windows on the left side of the house, Kayden ducked around to where a gutter pipe attached to a corner and began to climb up it, careful not pull it down or make too much noise. When he reached the second floor, he pulled out his pocket knife and slipped it under the screen, jimmying it up enough to push the whole screen up.

His hands sweat as he worked on the actual window underneath, slipping down a couple of inches before wiping each hand off on his jeans and climbing back up. After a few minutes of trying, he cracked the window frame and created enough wiggle room to push his fingers underneath and rip the window open, breaking off the latch lock on the other side. He slid to the ground and crouched under the windows, giving his arms a few minutes of rest before he climbed back up and pulled himself in through the broken window.

Inside the house, Kayden landed on a bed, a twin sized mattress with a blue plaid comforter. The room looked frozen in time, not much different from how it looked the last time he was in it. Tanner’s eighteenth birthday party, after the festivities with Tanner’s family, the five of them holed up in Tanner’s bedroom, eating cake and telling stories. The vivid memory almost floored him. He had to sit down on the bed to stop his head from spinning. It felt like Tanner could walk through his door, wearing a sheepish smile, holding a stack of paper plates with plastic utensils.

“Mom said we couldn’t use the glass plates,” he said, setting them down on his desk next to the cake.

Kayden remembered waving it off and saying: “Whatever, dude. All that matters is getting to eat cake. And your birthday, I guess.”

A warm, wet tear trailed down his right cheek, bringing his thoughts back to the quiet, dust covered room. He sat there for a while, listening to the indiscernible voices below him, until he found the courage to stand and walk around. Photography awards lined a few shelves on the wall beside his bed with several photo albums beneath them. The first few appeared to be covered in a thicker layer of dust. It compelled Kayden to grab the first one and flip through it, finding old black and white pictures of Tanner’s parents, the yard outside of the house, and a few of Sat looking to be about six or seven years old. One of the last photos showed Tanner and Sat together, though part of Sat’s forehead was cut off. They were smiling, and looking at each other rather than paying attention to the camera. Kayden peeled back the plastic cover and grabbed it for Sat.

Part of him wanted to look through the more recent ones, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. He didn’t know what he was looking for in that room. Peace of mind, maybe. An hour passed as he rummaged through drawers and folders and notebooks, dredging up old memories, then he opened the closet door, and found the one memory he wanted to take with him. The powder blue tux. The idiot bought the damn thing instead of renting it. Kayden’s eyes burned at the sight of it, more tears threatening to fall. Without thinking, he grabbed the jacket off the hanger and escaped through the window, not caring the fix the room back the way he found it.

Not even Sat knew he stole it, just the picture he gave to her. He let himself mourn a little that day, but not enough. Instead, he buried the jacket and kept it close. As he pulled it out of the box, it smelled like must, but still the faint smell of Tanner’s cologne lingered underneath. He held it gingerly, looking it over, pausing just as he was about to bring it up to his face.

“Fuck. No, this is stupid,” he said as he crumpled the jacket in his hands before shoving it back in the box. After a moment, Kayden pulled the jacket back out and folded it up so it wouldn’t get wrinkled. He tucked the broken glasses into the pocket and buried it back at the bottom.

Crying over the old jacket of a dead man wasn’t going to help anything. It wasn’t going to bring him back or give Kayden a chance at forgiveness. But there had to be something, anything to ease the constant ache in his chest. If they could summon a fucking demon goat man, maybe… Maybe. Kayden burst from his room and Sat jumped up from the couch, eyes wide.

“Jesus, you scared me,” she said, one hand clutching the front of her shirt. “What were you doing in there?”

“Uh, rearranging the boxes. I’ve got a lot of pent up energy. Raina and Darby haven’t left yet, have they?” Kayden said, running a shaky hand through his hair.

“Um, no. They’re still in my room,” Sat said, her eyes narrowed. “Why?”

Kayden’s eyes wandered over to the bedroom door. “I’ve just got a question for Darby.”

“Kay, it’s six-thirty in the morning. We may be insomniacs but it’s early for normal human beings. Can’t it wait?”

“I don’t wanna forget the question. She can go back to sleep after,” Kayden said, brushing her off as he walked over to the bedroom.

He knocked on the door a few times and waited, listening until he heard someone stand up and walk over to the door. It creaked open and Raina peeked out, her hair a wild mess.

“Yeah, Kayden? What’s up?” she said, her eyes bleary.

“Hey, sorry to bother you, but can I talk to your girlfriend for a minute?”

“Sure, sure. Hold on,” she said, yawning as she shuffled back to the bed and prodded Darby’s sleeping form.

They spoke in whispers for a minute until Raina returned to her side of the bed and Darby stood up. “You need me for something?” she said, rubbing her right eye as she walked to the doorway.

“Yeah, a personal favor,” Kayden said in a quiet voice, finding it hard to meet her eyes. “I know this isn’t an easy thing to ask but, do you know any rituals for summoning spirits?”

“What?” Darby said, her voice raised for a moment before she reined it back in. “What the fuck, Kayden. Why do you want to know that?”

“Not for practical use. I’m just working on something. A, uh, a writing project. I thought you might know, with all of your research.” Kayden spoke fast and moved over to the left a little so Sat couldn’t try to read their lips.

Darby glanced behind her at Raina, then stepped outside of the room and shut the door. “I don’t know what you’re doing, but it doesn’t sound good.”

“I just want to look through your notes. That’s all.”

Darby crossed her arms and frowned at him. “Why would you think I still have them?”

“I don’t know that for sure, but you did devote a whole year of your life to it,” Kayden said in a serious tone. “I’m not going to do anything with them, I just want to read them.”

Darby stared hard at Kayden for a long minute, trying to read his face. “Okay, okay fine. You can look at them on the one condition that you don’t tell Raina. She thinks I burned all my notebooks. And I wanted to. I just… I’ll bring them tomorrow. If you pull any evil shit, Kayden, it was all you. I was never a part of it.”

“It’s a deal. No evil shit, I promise,” he said, holding up one hand while placing the other over his heart.

Darby sighed and shook her head. “I’m not getting back to sleep now. Is there any coffee?”

Kayden directed her to the half full coffee pot and grabbed a blue, chipped mug from one of the cupboards. She poured a cup and moved to sit on the couch while Kayden grabbed one of the chairs. A silent tension fell over the apartment as the three of them sat around together, watching early morning TV. As soon as Raina woke up, Darby insisted that they leave, because they had homework to finish and upcoming tests.

“Sorry to bail so soon, but we probably should’ve left last night,” Darby said, her eyes lingering on Kayden a moment too long.

“Yeah, sorry guys, thanks for dinner though! It was fun,” Raina said with a wave.

“It was. We’ll have to you guys over again soon,” Kayden said as the two of them left the apartment, shutting the door behind them.

Silence fell over them again for a moment until Sat turned to stare at him. “What did you ask Darby to make her so on edge like that?”

“I just wanted to know if she still had something from back in high school. She didn’t. I don’t know why she was acting so weird,” he said, glancing from he TV to Sat, avoiding looking at her for more than a second at a time.

“Uh huh. I’m watching you,” she said, poking him hard in the shoulder.

“I didn’t do anything!” he said, though Sat prodded him again in the same spot, guaranteeing a bruise.

For the rest of the day, Sat kept her eye on Kayden, acting like she wanted to say something, but never actually going through with it. The next day, on his break, Darby walked in to the video store, holding a stack of five worn notebooks. Before handing them over, she made him swear once more that he wouldn’t tell Raina, and even then she appeared reluctant to give them up. She chewed at her lip and she gripped the stack a little tighter. Then she looked down at them, seeing a crude drawing of the goat man on the top cover, and shoved them into his arms. She fled the store and he was left alone with Darby’s year of research into the supernatural.


End file.
